Categories: OLD Media Moves

What's wrong with business journalism

Greg Gentschev, the founder of Brekiri, a business information-focused search engine, writes about what he perceives to be the problems with business journalism.

Gentschev hates earnings stories, and he can’t understand the dearth of good business blogs.

Gentschev writes, “More generally, nothing gets put in context. Few articles appear to have the space (and few writers the time and energy) to contextualize the latest company announcement in the industry, discuss how it might play out in terms of company strengths and weaknesses, and come to a truly novel conclusion. Also, to go back to grinding my earnings axe, the fact that earnings are up 50% this quarter means nothing unless we know how the year-ago quarter looked compared to the long-term trend.

“Business magazines and especially trade publications do a better job, of course. Trade publications in particular provide more in-depth analyses of their industries and specific companies. Unfortunately, I’m pretty much a generalist, so I can’t necessarily spend the time to keep track of these resources. I also tend to avoid subscribing to specific sources unless I need them for a current client project.

“In the end, we get the information, like the government, that we deserve. There’s simply no mass market for better business information, so in a way I can’t really hold the business press responsible for a certain striving for the lowest common denominator. Consider the fact that the Wall Street Journal, since being purchased by News Corp and slowly evolving towards a business tabloid, is perhaps the only major US newspaper with increasing circulation. In a way, this is a ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ type of problem. I’m simply out of synch with the type of content and writing that drives mass media markets, such as they are. Depth and utility don’t sell (much).”

View Comments

Joey says:
March 12, 2010 at 7:32 am
Excuse me, waiter-- could I have a table a bit closer to the point? Because any reporter on the job more than about three weeks already knows every complaint he raises, and those complaints were true back when Johann Gutenberg's boss told him to crank out Bibles more quickly back in 1455.
Greg says:
March 12, 2010 at 9:35 am
Thanks for the comment, Joey. So your saying this is old news? Isn't that exactly the problem? Journalists have been trained to consider new information "news," even if it doesn't really add anything to the conversation. Even a lot of good bloggers who are supposedly reinventing the medium are getting sucked into that mindset, publishing lists of daily links with a thin layer of summary rather than something more thoughtful. So why is it that the news hasn't been able to resolve these complaints since the days of Gutenberg? I'd be interested in hearing what else every reporter knows about why this is still an issue.
I realize not every article is going to be a deep piece, but most business news organizations aren't showing much effort to innovate, from my perspective as a reader. As you're probably aware, most news is a commodity these days, so I'd like to see people try harder to come up with something unique. With the entire world at your doorstep online, it should be possible to resegment the audience and find people who are interested in a different approach.
Joey says:
March 12, 2010 at 1:25 pm
Hey, I'd love to see people try harder to come up with something unique. Tell it to my publisher and his boss the CFO. They do not want unique-- they want reliability in the quarterly numbers, so they can make payroll, earn a profit, and live life. Sooner or later, that will drive uniformity of product; even if the product isn't stellar, even if the numbers are trending down, you want as much certainty about that as possible so you can begin planning a response.
The problem isn't confined to news; it's endemic in every business in every industry. We all start out with dreams of conquering the world and eventually realize that making ends meet comes first. You want a formula to do that, and blandness ensues.
I don't have a solution to that, and never said I did. I only said that to notice the problem and diagnose it as such is about as profound as realizing an eraser should go at the far end of the pencil.
Greg says:
March 12, 2010 at 7:03 pm
I think there's a clear choice between blandness and conquering the world, and not everyone chooses blandness. If pencils didn't have erasers, I'd be advocating that too.